


a human thing

by themountainkingsreturn



Series: Rewriting Robin Hood [2]
Category: Robin Hood (BBC 2006)
Genre: AU, F/M, Fix-It, Guy lives, Robin Hood Rewrite
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-11
Updated: 2016-08-11
Packaged: 2018-08-08 02:19:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7739665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themountainkingsreturn/pseuds/themountainkingsreturn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Saviors aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a human thing

**Author's Note:**

> A companion piece to our Robin Hood rewrite that I wrote a very long time ago. In our rewrite, Kate and Meg are childhood friends, Isabella is not evil, and Guy lives. He ponders how foolish it was to expect Marian to wash him clean. He falls in love again. He finds humanity.

Saviors aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.

He finds that out when he watches blood soak through a white dress (white, white, of course it was white), and when there’s dust in his eyes and bile in his throat and something horrid tearing at his chest like it’s going to rip through his bones. He would’ve welcomed that. He would’ve welcomed anything to make it all come to a thundering halt.

But, no, that isn’t right.

He finds it out when he is looking through bars at a pair of crinkled blue eyes that he would do anything to press his lips to, but no, no, that isn’t right either.

He really finds it out when he sees his own filthy reflection in a looted goblet and realizes that the only one who can do any sort of saving is himself.

Saviors are never what they are cracked up to be. He hates himself a bit more after that.

 

 

“I always wanted to be a horseman. Raise them, train them. Ride into battle with a lord on a great black steed,” she says, then looks down and smiles a bit sadly.

He watches her spar clumsily with Kate, becoming redder and redder with each swing, and then he watches them really fight, scream into the night, exchange hurts and wounds and then watches her crumple into a heap, and he wonders how anyone can possibly hold that much passion in them all day long without wanting to burst.

“I just want everything to be all right,” she says, muffled, “I didn’t mean any harm.”

“Sometimes that’s not enough,” he says quietly.

“What?”

“Good intentions. Not meaning to do harm doesn't mean you're not doing any.”

She looks at him hard, red-eyed. “Speaking from experience, are we?”

He doesn’t meet her gaze.

“Experience is the best teacher,” he says into the dark.

She looks at her hands, back at him, back at her tangled fingers. He can see her weaving herself together, piece by piece, becoming brighter, more solid, more durable. He blinks.

 

 

She brings him supper. She doesn’t trust him yet. He doesn’t try to make her. He’s not sure he wants her to.

 

 

He can see her speaking to Kate from the corner of his eye, and he sees them embrace, hold each other tightly. She’s got a fire blazing in the dark of her eyes. He can’t hear what they’re saying, but he’s watched Vaisey mumble the words “Robin Hood” enough times to read it on their lips. It looks as if they’re taking an oath, saying a prayer.

 

 

It’s the slap, he thinks, it’s Hood’s quiet disgust, and then, later, the manservant’s face shoved close to his own.

“ _None_ of us can afford to do this…this…thing you’ve been doing!” he says, gesturing in the emptiness. “You choose your side, I don’t care which, but for God’s sake, just _fight_.”

He knows the word the manservant is looking for is _apathy_ , but he doesn’t say so. Instead, he clenches his teeth and nods.

She unties him and helps him to his feet. The manservant hands him a sword, eying him slantwise. Her expression was cool, detached, when she pulled him up, but now she’s got crinkled eyes again.

He and the manservant buy two horses, and her lips thin.

He climbs on the black horse (old habits die hard), and extends a hand.

“Come along, then.”

Her face doesn’t change until he’s pulled her up behind him, but he can hear her grin as they set off at a canter (or so he’d like to think).

 

 

He’d imagined kissing Marian many times. He’d imagined scenarios, schemes, sensations. He’d imagined what if might feel like to take her and wrap himself around her (and she around him) until their limbs, faces, bodies were indistinguishable, until white bled into black and the stains on him faded. It was a taking. It was a having (in theory; in truth, it was all wrong).

 

 

After everything, he sits alone under a tree (he isn’t tied up this time, but he might as well be). He aches. He isn’t sure the bleeding has stopped. He doesn’t really want to check.

She comes hurtling out of the forest, not a hundred yards away, all bright and solid and breathing hard, and, without a word, sits down with him as though it’s been planned all along. Minutes pass. She takes his hand. They sit in silence and watch the men on the hillside.

When she kisses him, it isn’t a taking, or having, or giving, or any ridiculous simile he can think of. It is Meg, Margaret, Margaret Bennett with her hands on his face and her fingers pushing back his hair when she looks at him.

It isn’t like anything he’s ever imagined, and he thinks he’ll break under the weight of it.

And she’s wearing purple anyways, and everyone knows black and purple together don’t symbolize a damn thing.

“Come along, then,” she says.

 

 

The humanity of her is grit in his teeth, it’s glorious dirt and earth and hot sun. He finds, like all humans, she bleeds when cut and hits when provoked and cries when hurt and wants things desperately and her white dresses get dirty at the hem. She loves her friends more than herself, perhaps, and she presents him with the deed to the old Locksley land from Isabella and tells him matter-of-factly that she’s taking in the old horse marshall to teach her the trade and it he wants to join her, he’s welcome.

She would have been fine if he’d never come along. And he would have been all right in the end, too. But it’s far better this way.

The wedding is small. There are flowers in her hair. He wears black because he doesn’t own anything else, but she smiles like she wants to laugh and plays with one of the buckles. He dances for the first, and, please God, last time. She doesn’t look like an angel, but she looks like herself. There’s strawberry juice on her lip and he wipes it away and she, she smiles and dreams and wakes in the night and holds him and pushes him away and learns and ages and becomes wiser and forgets and even, that first night, dissolves into laughter the first time he kisses the inside of her thigh, then bites his lip in her eagerness to make him continue.

He does these things too. He also finds, to his very great surprise, that he is human, too. Nothing irredeemable or damned or symbolic. Just a man.

Saviors aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.


End file.
